The book starts off with Governor Stark and his group visiting a small town in their state. It then flashes back to before Stark ever thought of running for Governor, even before he began to toy with the idea of politics. Through an accident in his home town, Stark gains statewide recognition and is eventually asked to run for governor. What he doesn’t know is that he is being used to split the vote for one of the other candidates. He finds out soon enough, though, and pulls himself out of the race, but campaigns for the candidate he was to take votes away from. He gains popularity and is elected governor the next time around.

Now the other main character, Jack Burden, comes into the story. He is a reporter and assigned to cover Stark and his campaign. He winds up becoming an aide to Stark and help

Stark is now forced to find another way to get MacMurfee to back off. He decides to give the hospital contract to one of MecMurfee’s men, which persuades MacMurfee to forget the situation.

I thought that this book was too long. I liked the flashbacks and the different levels to the story, but I didn’t like the fact that it was over 400 pages long. I didn’t like the way the author described some of the settings. He took too long explaining what was going on in some spots and it made me want to skip whole paragraphs just to get to some more exciting parts. This book was fairly interesting, but I think that there was too little dialogue and too much explanation. The explanations did help to describe the scene, but I felt that the author explained for too long a time.

This book uses a lot of flashbacks as a kind of “frame” for the rest of the story. There are many flashbacks to Burden’s childhood and a flashback to before the Civil War. These all explain subtle points of the story that finally come together at the end of the book.

One of the themes that I got out of this book deals with the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty.” The rhyme goes like this: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, Couldn’t put Humpty together again.” This, in my mind at least, links to the fall of Willie Stark. Another theme would be that out of all the evil that happened to Jack Burden, in the end, he found who he really was

Some topics in this essay:
Jack Burden, Judge Irwin, MacMurfee Irwin, Governor Stark, Adam Stanton, Anne Stanton, Willie Stark, Civil War, Stark Adam, Stark Stark, jack burden, judge irwin, willie stark, anne stanton, judge irwin father, “dirty work”, irwin father, stark’s son, hospital contract, moral issues, fall willie stark, adam stanton,